What am I doing wrong? XP/Vista dual boot problems

davort

Member
Alright, I installed XP first, worked fine, then I installed Vista. Now Vista works, XP doesn't boot. It gives me an ntoskrnl.exe missing error.

I tried using the XP boot disc to do a bootcfg /rebuild. It didn't work (said it couldnt find any XP installs)

My (limited) understanding of this is that the arc path in the boot.ini is pointing to the wrong spot. So, I moved the XP boot.ini to my vista boot drive, as well as ntldr and NTDETECT.com.

Then I changed the boot.ini to what I think is the proper arc path (I've also tried rdisk(2)partition(1), same error), and used EasyBCD to create an XP entry for it on C:. I'm still getting the ntoskrnl.exe missing error.

Here's a screenshot of what I think is the pertinent information, if you need anything else let me know! I've been messing with this stuff for hours, really frustrated at this point.

Thanks!
Link to the screenshot of boot.ini, disk manager, etc.: http://i40.tinypic.com/zodjee.jpg
 
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Hi Davort, welcome to NST
Your screenshot is too compressed to be able to read, but one thing I can see is that your XP appears to be on a logical disk inside an extended partition.
The extended has a partition number even though it's only an envelope for the logical disk(s) inside.
Have you allowed for this (ie added 1) when calculating (guessing) the partition number in boot.ini
If you change boot ini and reboot, you can try all rdisk values from 0 to n-1 (where n is the number of HDDs) and partition values from 1 to m (where m is the number of partitions on your XP disk (remembering the extended))
That's probably as quick a method of determining the right values as posting and waiting for replies on here between attempts.


Addendum:


Now you've reposted the image. Try rdisk(0) partition(2 3 or 4)
Rdisk 0 is the disk you're booting from. Ignore what Vista disk management calls it. NTLDR gets the numbers from the BIOS not from Vista.
 
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Thanks Terry, I dig the spitfire avatar!

Ok, I'll give that a try, thanks!

Addendum:

I've tried:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)

and

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)

to no avail.

Any other ideas?
 
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From the Wiki about the ntoskrnl error...

ntoskrnl.exe is missing or corrupt

"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:<Windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe.Please re-install a copy of the above file"

This means the ARC paths in the [operating systems] section or the default entry in BOOT.INI is incorrect. Double-check that multi() and disk() are both set to 0, and verify that rdisk(x)partition(y) points to the correct partition where Windows XP is installed. Instructions on the correct configuration of boot.ini can be found here

Are you sure it isnt rdisk (3)? From what i see in your disk management screen the OS drives are listed 3rd in teh drive list. Possibly rdisk (2). If you look at that pic i see Storage as Disk (0) and Media as Disk (1). So that should make the rdisk value either 2 or 3.
 
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For some reason, it was reading the boot.ini from D:\ not C:\ when I used the proper ARC path in the D: boot.ini it worked!

It was rdisk(0)partition(2), for the record.

Thanks
 
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Yes. Sorry, I noticed that D:\ was your "system" partition after you reposted the screenshot, but neglected to mention it. That's where all the boot files for Vista and XP are.
(if you use EasyBCD/tools/edit legacy it will always find the right boot.ini for you to save you editing the wrong one.)
 
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Mak, can you even edit that last post from IE/Firefox? Its doing the same thing here and its cuttting off that citation from the wiki.
 
Will edit it soon. I see it now in IE. Was using Opera when i did it. So it is something on the site.

Its the Code Tags that are breaking the site.

I had them in that post. Removed them and it is fixed. Figured out what it was.
 
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